The Friendly Society of the Filk Community

This is the organizational list for the Filkers' Friendly Society, which is my arbitrary name for what can be renamed at the members' discretion when we've got a definite group of members. For now, what we have are a lot of people who are interested in organizing a mutual benevolent association of some sort, within the filk community, to help each other through these difficult economic times in some kind of organized way which ensures that those who give support when they can, will also receive support in their turn when they need it. As a community, we have done wonders for some of our members who had horrible emergencies that would have been financially devastating without the outpouring of support from the group. We're good at that. What we have not done so far, because it wasn't necessary, was to organize that to make sure that nobody fell through the cracks. That's what I want to do now.

The overall structure, as I've envisioned it, is pretty simple: a group of households (can be individuals, families, multi-family clusters, what-have-you) commit, in writing, to help support each other in times of economic catastrophe for a minimum period of X years. It needs to be longitudinal because that way each household has opportunity both to be able to help others and maybe in need of help themselves. Otherwise it becomes a charity, and that isn't the purpose; the purpose is to address the worries of people who, however momentarily secure they may be, are aware that in the current climate of economic and health-care uncertainty, there's no telling whether or when they may need to be on the receiving end.

There are a lot of questions attached to this. Do we want to have regular dues and fund members' emergencies out of that, or a system of levies when an emergency arises or just a system of publicizing and accepting voluntary contributions? How do we decide what constitutes an emergency which qualifies for assistance? Who can join? Who holds onto the money? What happens if someone wants to leave? Do we want to do anything else in the spectrum of the work that such societies have sometimes done (which include charitable activities as a group, fundraising through members' donated talents or services for supplementing emergency funds, buying medical or life insurance on a collective basis and passing the savings on to members or even fully self-insuring, barter-coupons for services or goods among members, direct service/aid offered among members, such as taking sick members to doctor appointments, and a half a hundred other things I haven't studied up on yet)?? And how do we legally organize ourselves to make all of the decisions we make about the previous questions hold up when challenged... because no matter how well we like each other going in, they sometime will be?

This forum is, for now, where I invite people to raise, discuss, and get creative about those and other questions. Welcome!